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TWST: Could we begin that quick overview of Fulcrum Pharma (London:FUL.L)? Perhaps you could give us a quick historical sketch and then just bring us up to date with where the company is today?

Dr. Court: Fulcrum has an experienced and stable management team, which has been together for over six years. We began as a virtual drug development company called Protodigm, founded in 1996 on behalf of Hoffmann-La Roche. where over 3 years we laid down the foundations of the drug development services that we currently now sell to our customers. In 1999, we formed Fulcrum, an independent drug development services company which has subsequently grown in the last three years and undergone some important transitions The first of these occurred in the year 2000 when we established our first Japanese office in Tokyo. Later that year, in March of 2000, we floated the company in London, to obtain capital to expand our business, both here in the U.K. and in Japan. Importantly this also demonstrated to our clients that we were here to stay and we were properly capitalized to take on board long-term contracts. Profitability was achieved profitability in our first year of trading. Successes have continued and in the current financial year, we announced our maiden dividend to our shareholders, that is, less than 3 years from the formation of the company. The company has therefore grown significantly since we began in 1999 when we started with one contract to today, where we have have worked with over twenty clients and we have engaged in over thirty contracts.

TWST: What are the goals you would like to achieve over the next two or three years?

Dr. Court: We’ve got a clear view of what we want to achieve in the next three to five years. We understand what Fulcrum will look like to make it both sustainable and scalable and have recently completed a fund-raising to support our strategy. We intend to expand the company based on our sound beginnings and there are four key elements to our plan. The first is to the scaling up our European operation. Currently, we have an office in the UK and so that we can address the UK market where the majority of European biotech companies exist. In addition we have begun creating a cluster of individuals mainland Europe so we can increase access to Germany, Switzerland, and France. In our last fiscal year , Europe provided sixty percent of our Group sales . Our aim is to maintain a high proportion of our sales in the European arena while we begin to expand in other areas. The second part of the plan is the globalization of the business. Earlier I mentioned our specialization y in Japan in addition we are now cloning our UK operation in the US. . This means we can create business opportunities between our European office, the U.S. and Japan, and we can leverage the global resources across the three areas. I should also mention that in Japan, in addition to our core project management services, we intend to set up a specialist oncology clinical research organization to provide high level clinical monitoring We see a gap in the market in this where existing clients have already indicated a demand. Thus Japan will not only expand its existing business but also create new services. The third part of the strategy is the use of preferred supplier arrangements, which we’re using as marketing tools to access multiple contracts from single clients. Using this tool we plan to establish relationships with companies and act as their development department. This strategy may involve making small investments in those companies to establish the relationship. The fourth part is the establishment of our strategic services group. I’ve mentioned previously that we’ve done discrete pieces of work such as development advisory boards, chemistry manufacturing and controls and business assessments. We now intend to consolidate this and develop this further across the three regions – Europe, U.S., and Japan – so that we can increase our services and products plus our internal billing capacity. Our near term milestones are to grow our U.S. operation, establish the legal structure for our expansion in Japan, market the preferred supply arrangements both in the U.S. and Europe and ensure the strategic services are operational by end 2002.